TRANSFORMATION OF A RUIN AND DIALOGUE OF GENERATIONS: EXHIBITION BY KNUTD ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR KATERYNA DANNYK WITHIN THE "WORLD OF SERGEI PARAJANOV" ART PROJECT

On September 12, 2026, supported by the II International Film Award MIF, a significant cultural event enriched the art space. An exhibition opened within the large-scale "World of Sergei Parajanov" project at the Exhibition Hall of the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Organization of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine (IF NSHU). Kateryna Dannyk, Candidate of Cultural Studies and Associate Professor at the Department of Performing Arts and Culture of the Kyiv National University of Technologies and Design (KNUTD), presented her powerful artistic voice in this exposition.

The exhibition narrative began right at the entrance to the hall, where viewers were greeted by the works of students from groups BVM-21 and BVM-22. These oil paintings depicting pomegranates were the result of a series of original master classes conducted by Kateryna Dannyk in 2023-2024. The artist established a tradition of celebrating her birthday on May 17 by hosting these open studios. During these performative sessions, students watched the film The Color of Pomegranates and painted the fruit from life, immersing themselves directly in the director's complex visual poetics.

The central element of the exhibition itself, which was available for public viewing for two weeks, featured the artist's conceptual canvases from the "Salvaged Frames" series. The genesis of this cycle is a striking act of rescuing cultural memory. The material foundation for the paintings consists of antique frames evacuated by the artist in 2024 from the town of Mykolaivka, Donetsk region. Today, this town lies directly on the front line, and had these artifacts not been literally carried out from under enemy fire, they would have inevitably been reduced to ashes.

From an art criticism perspective, the "Salvaged Frames" series is a profound exemplar of deviant art rooted in the aesthetic of decadence. Kateryna Dannyk does not merely restore the rescued wood. She executes a complex semantic transformation of the object. In the vein of decadence philosophy, where motifs of decay, eschatological anxiety, and melancholy acquire the highest aesthetic value, the frames bearing the scars of war become a kind of reliquary. The artist conceptualizes trauma through the visual language of dark surrealism, turning objects charred or damaged by time and war into self-sufficient, full-fledged works of art. In her execution, decadence is not a glorification of the end, but rather a documentation of transition, an apotheosis of the fragility of existence, and a manifesto of the creative act's victory over total destruction.

A particularly symbolic moment of the vernissage was the dialogue between contemporary visual art and classic cinema. At the exhibition opening, Kateryna Dannyk ceremoniously presented Svitlana Yaremivna Povshyk with an exclusive tote bag featuring an original print. The print on the bag reproduces the artist's painting directly inspired by Sergei Parajanov's masterpiece of poetic cinema. This gesture not only underscored the overarching theme of the project but also demonstrated the continuity of the cultural code, where visual poetics finds a new performative embodiment in contemporary applied and fine arts.

The participation of KNUTD faculty in projects of such a high caliber confirms the uninterrupted development of Ukrainian culture and the powerful symbiosis of academic science and vibrant contemporary art that reflects upon the most acute challenges of our time.

02.10.2026